EuroMAC 11 – Satellite Event: Musical analysis of musical practice in Latin America. Proposals for epistemological detachment
5th October 2026, 16:00 CET (Barcelona) / 11:00 ART (Buenos Aires)
Online Event
For the first time since 1989, EuroMAC is being held on the Iberian Peninsula — a position that opens a dialogue with Latin America, where the organising societies (ATAM, SATMUS and SPIM) also have members. At the invitation of the EuroMAC 11 organising committee, colleagues from Latin America have put together this online event, which, from a decolonial perspective, invites the European academic community to reflect on the biases its own viewpoint may impose on Latin American musical practices, and more broadly to question the epistemologies and power dynamics of music theory and analysis at the intersection of the Global North and South.
The session takes the form of invited presentations (in Spanish and Portuguese) followed by a public debate. Access is online and free of charge, managed by the Complutense Institute of Musical Sciences (ICCMU) as collaborating institution, with a capacity of 300 participants.
Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89267105681?pwd=JZkbjedAGuDJbabJuArfwGFR1MlnhY.1
Convenor: Favio Shifres (National University of La Plata, Argentina)
Speakers: María Inés Burcet (National University of La Plata, Argentina), Pilar Holguín Tovar (Pedagogical and Technological University of Colombia), María Marchiano (National University of La Plata, Argentina), Isabel Cecilia Martínez (National University of La Plata, Argentina), Christian Weik (Federal Institute of Paraíba, Brazil)
Moderator: Marta Rodríguez Cuervo (Complutense University of Madrid / ICCMU, Spain)
Rationale
The field of Music Analysis presents certain problematic aspects in Latin America. These stem primarily from the intersection between a score-centred academic music establishment—strongly rooted in Western music theory—and a musical landscape that is diverse, comprising an infinite array of musical expressions from multiple origins. The identity of the music analyst is called into serious question when their interpretations diverge from this reality. The imposition of hegemonic ontologies and epistemologies renders invisible ways of thinking about, creating, feeling and experiencing music that ought to form part of an original body of analytical approaches. Both subaltern studies and critical musicology seek to reverse this invisibility by giving voice to original musical experience as a theoretical framework. In this sense, the aim is to broaden traditional analytical horizons. This panel examines aspects of musical analysis in order to place it at the service of that experience. The collection of papers presented here outlines some possible avenues for such a broadening. In this sense, they constitute possible paths of detachment (to use Walter Mignolo’s term) from Eurocentric epistemology.
For more information: https://euromac11.sciencesconf.org/page/online_event?lang=en